During the Cold War there was one word guaranteed to strike terror in the hearts of any NATO serviceman: ‘Spetsnaz’. Gadge Harvey finds out more
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petsnaz usually refers to Russian Special Forces, and usually by people who are thinking in terms of the UK’s SAS or USA’s Delta Force. Spetsnaz is, however, a very misunderstood word. A contraction of the Russian ‘spetsialnogo naznacheniya’ it simply means ‘special purposes’. Many types of Spetsnaz exist – including police and traffic wardens! During the Cold War it was the Spetsnaz of the Russian Intelligence Services, the GRU, that were the elite strikeforces of the Red Army. Other Soviet forces like the Naval Infantry, MVD Interior Army and the KGB all had their own Spetsnaz raiding and intelligence-gathering units, but in this article
SOVIET SPETSNAZ RAIDER we shall concentrate on the scout/raiders of the Soviet Military Intelligence, known as the GRU (Glavnoye Razvedyvatel’noye Upravleniye). While often considered the counterpart to units like the British SAS, Spetsnaz units were less well-trained and more comparable to US Army Rangers. But the sheer quantity of men dwarfed traditional NATO Special Forces and put them in their own unique category. Spetsnaz troops were organised in brigades of four battalions (a battalion was roughly 500 men) – and it was believed the Russians could field 16 Spetsnaz brigades in the early 80s! If your maths is a bit rusty
that’s 64,000 men – no NATO Special Forces unit could put nearly as many men into the field as Russian Spetsnaz groups. As a comparison, the UK’s SAS was unlikely to have numbered more than 500 men during this period. GRU Spetsnaz teams take their lineage from WWII Russian scout units known as Razvedchiki (scouts) or vysotniki (rangers). These were either parachuted behind enemy lines in WWII or worked with partisans to destabilise German communications – their role in a future war was certainly very similar and members often referred to their ranks using the WWII nomenclature.
Saboteurs and assassins In a third world war the Russian army tasked their Spetsnaz teams with raiding jobs far behind NATO lines (much as with last issue’s NVA fallschirmjäger, but on a much bigger scale) to destroy key targets, sabotage nuclear launch sites and assassinate leading military and political figures. Some farfetched Cold War rumours alleged that Russian Olympic athletes were actually Spetsnaz soldiers, as being international sportsmen gave them the perfect opportunity and cover to be in European cities in advance of any war – although how true this was we will never know. The only well-known use of Spetsnaz teams was in Russia’s war in Afghanistan and even details of those operations are still hard to come by (rumours that Swedish coastguards had shot and killed Spetsnaz frogmen off the coast of Sweden in the 80s were vigorously denied by both parties!). Spetsnaz units were so shrouded in
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June 2012